When today’s Capitol Hill insiders hear about Longworth, they most likely think about the House office building located between those named for more famous former Speakers: Joseph Cannon and Sam Rayburn.

But John Boehner has a more visceral connection: He sees Nick Longworth as a role model. Longworth, a popular House speaker during the 1920s, was a dealmaker, a believer in bipartisanship and, like Boehner, a Cincinnati politician who made it big in Washington.

Boehner has read and re-read a key chapter on Longworth in the book “Kings of the Hill” – written by Dick and Lynne Cheney back in 1983 – and has drawn lessons from Longworth’s tenure as speaker.

Longworth was viewed by some contemporaries as a “lightweight,” the Cheneys write, yet he became known for “making the House work more efficiently.” In the end, Longworth became “one of its best-loved Speakers, [and] he restored that office to its former position of power.”

Indeed, Longworth was known for asserting the power of the House against the executive branch; he cut a major tax deal in the Senate; and he occasionally enjoyed sipping bourbon and branch water with lawmakers and press in a Capitol hideaway.

Boehner certainly seems enamored with Longworth’s embrace of House legislative power and his moves to put the chamber on equal footing with the presidency and the Senate. Longworth was known for ruling with a velvet glove – much as Boehner does – but he also “he did indeed possess a fist of iron,” the Cheneys wrote.

In recently re-reading the Cheneys’ book, according to his spokesman Michael Steel, Boehner gained further appreciation for the Longworth model.

“Longworth is an inspiration to Boehner not only because he was from Cincinnati and held the office of speaker of the House, but also because he opened up the House and made it run properly for the members and the American people.”

Boehner gave a more relevant insight during his speech last month at Washington’s American Enterprise Institute, when he explained how he would like to serve as speaker.

In the decade following the House’s revolt against the tyrannical Joe Cannon, the House had foundered, Boehner explained. But that changed on the day when Longworth was sworn in as speaker and gave the following description of how he would preside:

“I want to effectively assist you in bringing about universal recognition of the fact that this House, closer as it is to the people than any similar body and more directly responsive to their will, is in very truth, as it ought to be, the most dominant legislative assembly in the world.”

Those direct quotes may very well describe what Boehner might say if he grabs the speaker’s gavel from Nancy Pelosi.

“Let that be our goal: a people’s House that is quiet in its effectiveness, but unmistakable in its pride and purpose,” Boehner said at his AEI speech.

Known to his friends as Nick, Longworth was a House Republican of patrician background, a Harvard graduate who represented Cincinnati for a quarter-century. That background obviously appeals to Boehner, who grew up in the family bar in working-class Cincinnati and would welcome a similar reign as speaker.

A veteran of the Ways and Means Committee, where he was an expert on tax policy, Longworth presided over the House during what were the presidencies of Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover.

Longworth died suddenly in April 1931, while visiting in South Carolina with a friend Laura Curtis, who has been described as “a poker pal.” That came at a pivotal moment for the House, after the 1930 election had produced a nearly even partisan split. Later that year, the House selected Democrat John Nance Garner of Texas as Speaker. And the nation soon moved into the New Deal, a very different political era.

That may have been the end of Longworth’s era, at least for 80 years. But it hardly is the complete Longworth story.

Longworth and his wife Alice were quite the socialites in Washington. The daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, Alice first met—and courted—Longworth, then a second-term Congressman, when they joined a lengthy 1905 diplomatic mission that sailed across the Pacific to Japan. Led by Secretary of War William Howard Taft—who, not coincidentally, was also from Cincinnati—the mission was designed to help settle the war between Russia and Japan.

Although the marriage continued until his death, alas, it was not the most committed relationship. In her own memoir, and especially in two later biographies, Alice described Nick’s marital infidelities and her own wandering eye.

In a 1988 biography of Alice by Washington author and biographer Carol Felsenthal (whose recent work includes a book on Bill Clinton’s post-presidency), one chapter had the title, “A Love Affair with Borah.” That referred to Alice’s relationship with William Borah, the influential Republican Senator from Idaho, whose 33 years in the Senate included a prominent role in helping to defeat President Woodrow Wilson’s advocacy of the League of Nations.

Although Nicholas Longworth had long since lost the ability to defend himself, that chapter began with a description of the amorous speaker. “The settings for Nick’s sexual trysts became increasingly inappropriate, and his conquests included women from Alice’s own circle.”

Such details are not likely to gain further official exploration as Boehner praises the official aspects of his political hero’s life.

In seeking to emulate the beloved former speaker, as the Cheneys described, Boehner likely will choose to describe a predecessor remembered because he was “a strong Speaker, and he had nurtured in [House members] a fierce pride in being part of the House of Representatives.”